Effect of herbicides on earthworm-A review

Abstract: Earthworm play a valuable role in organizing and enhancing the supplements of soil, serve as a greater percentage (>80%) of biomass of terrestrial invertebrates. Hence, earthworm can provide an early warning of degradation in soil quality as they act as an applicable bio indicators of chemical contamination of the soil in terrestrial ecosystem. Earthworm show many sensitive responses to environmental influences and they also act as decomposers, due to this they generally used as test organisms. Earthworms are ecologically very important as many substances are responsible for the risk of secondary poisoning through feeding on worms.The use of herbicides to control weeds has been recognized as a part of agricultural practices throughout the world.The herbicides, used to fight against the weeds in the agriculture are very toxic to soil biota (Kumar and Kumawat,2018 ). Unfortunately, the indiscriminate use of these herbicides to improve agricultural production and yield but may have impacts on non-target organisms, especially earthworms and aquatic life forms and their environment. Many studies have showed that the qualitative and quantitative change in enzyme activity occurs due to the use of herbicides. The fate of herbicides in soil is responsible for the distressed of earthworm. For the estimation of lethal and sub lethal consequences of chemical contaminated pollutant earthworm have been used. Hence earthworms are helpful to determine the contaminant fractions which may operate on all creatures assimilating in touch with soil.The main concept is that, these herbicides can affect soil and soil organism through both direct and indirect way. The article highlights the effect and consequences of herbicides on earthworn.